Oven appliances generally include a cabinet that defines a cooking chamber for receipt of food articles for cooking. The cabinet can also define an opening for accessing the cooking chamber. Certain oven appliances include a pair of doors rotatably mounted to the cabinet at the opening to permit selective access to the cooking chamber through the opening. Oven appliances having such doors are generally referred to as French door style oven appliances.
French door style oven appliances generally include flanges between the doors that overlap each other when the doors are closed. The flanges can limit heat loss through a gap between the doors. Flanges generally contact and slide against each other during opening and closing of the oven appliance's doors. Such contact and rubbing can cause wear damage, such as galling and gouging, on the flanges and negatively affect the flanges' cosmetic appearance and/or function.
In addition, during opening and closing of the doors, one door is preferably closed prior to the other door such that the flanges properly overlap when both doors are closed. To assist proper positioning of doors, certain oven appliances include a linkage system that couples the doors together such that rotational motion is transferred between the doors. Thus, if one door is rotated then the linkage assembly can cause the other door to rotate as well. However, such linkage assemblies generally have a significant amount of slop or play such that the doors can become misaligned during opening and closing. In particular, the leading door can fall behind the trailing door, and such misalignment can cause the flanges to impact and prevent the doors from properly closing.
Accordingly, an oven appliance having an improved interface between a pair of doors when the doors are in a closed position would be useful. In particular, an oven appliance having features for limiting or hindering wear between flanges of a pair of doors of the oven appliance would be useful. In addition, an oven appliance having features for limiting or hindering misalignment between flanges of a pair of doors of the oven appliance would be useful.